My mother doesn’t feel close. She feels impossibly far – that’s the whole problem with death, that’s why we all try to avoid it. I don’t ache constantly now, but like most things I got to keep it until I was ready to let it go. I still long for my mother, sometimes with scary fierce intensity. Her absence still stings – particularly in moments when I knowshe would have been present. I still have hard days, hard weeks, and I still forget for a few seconds that she’s gone. It still hurts.
But gradually I realized that the pain wasn’t keeping her here. It maybe let her phantom stay, but see-through mirages are not my mother. My mother was vibrant: she made noise and ate food and held the kids’ hands on walks. She did things phantoms can’t do, things my memory can’t fabricate into new behavior. She was real. So at some point the fear of losing more of her became the realization that it was already gone.
What does remain is the love and my connection to it. What has proven indelible are the lessons she taught me: that I am worthy of love, that I can do hard and scary things. She taught me to let myself off of hooks and to trust in all circumstances that good will win out. She taught me to see beauty and appreciate humor. These are stubborn, carved in truths that have endured the cracking of my foundation. As my world crumbled and everything became a question the things my mother gave me stood firm, never wavered, bound me fast to the part of her that cannot die. I still have that and she still has me.
So when I’m longing or laughing or being brave or feeling scared or trying not to yell at my kids, in some way she is there. Not the way I want her to be and if I’m honest, most of the time it’s not even almost the way it used to be, but I am learning how to move in the world again, tethered to the things that always held me. I am learning how to be less-than-whole, but still okay.
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This article originally appeared at KrisannJoye.com.
